In The News: Sunday Edition

There are multiple stories today - all related to birth pains which are increasing by the day:

Israel To Strike Iran In Three Months?

As Washington and Tel-Aviv continue to debate the possibility of a preventive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities, there are some indications that Israel may strike in as soon as three months.

Defense minister, Ehud Barak, says that if Israel plans to attack Iran it should act quickly, DEBKA-NET-Weekly’s sources say. Barak spoke of a three-month deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Meanwhile former Mossad chief Meir Dagan has said that Israel will know when Iran moves to the stage of nuclear weapon production, such as enriching uranium to a degree of 90 per cent, the Haaretz newspaper reports.

Tensions are rising high in the region with strong rhetoric heard from both sides. A senior Iranian lawmaker has warned that any move – even the “slightest of errors” – which could be considered a hostile act against the Iran will jeopardize the very existence of the Israel. "In the case of any venture against our country, the aggressors will face a swift, resolute and serious counter-measure," Alaeddin Boroujerdi said, according to Press TV.

Window For Diplomatic Solution Closing

Bull's-Eye Placed On European Christians

A new report finds that Christians are the target of religiously motivated physical attacks, intolerance and discrimination more than the people of any other faith in Europe.

The report said 84 percent of “the strongly increasing vandalism in France is directed against Christian places of worship. In Scotland, 95 percent of religiously motivated violence targets Christians.”

Authored by Gudrun Kugler, whose NGO is found atIntoleranceAgainstChristians.eu, the report highlights attacks on Christians because they are Christian.

“Intolerant and discriminatory behavior also results from a negative, categorical bias against Christians or Christianity as a whole. This behavior causes various sectors of society to be used as vehicles of intolerance and discrimination against Christians. Such areas of society include the media or arts (through negative stereotyping or profane exhibitions); on the government level (through a discriminatory law or a biased court verdict); on the political level (exclusion from the public sphere, a resolution of a parliament, etc.). Intolerance and discrimination against Christians is also promulgated in the workplace, academia, and in the private and social sphere.

The Sun Also Sets

When Morgan Stanley ran those numbers in 2009, the debt-to-revenue ratio in Greece was 312 percent; in the United States it was 358 percent. If Greece has been knocking back the ouzo, we’re face down in the vat. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute calculates that, if you take into account unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare versus their European equivalents, Greece owes 875 percent of GDP; the United States owes 911 percent — or getting on for twice as much as the second-most-insolvent Continental: France at 549 percent.

Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of treasury bonds every month — or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India — every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College-debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy — tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.

“We are headed for the most predictable economic crisis in history,” says Paul Ryan. And he’s right. But precisely because it’s so predictable the political class has already discounted it.

“How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been going through the gradual phase so long, we’re kinda used to it. But it’s coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad.

See Where Christian Church Growth Is "explosive"

One of the world’s premiere organizations for spreading the message of the Bible in restricted nations says the underground Christian church in Iran is experiencing “explosive” growth.

Christians in the Islamic mullah-run nation constantly are targets for persecution. WND has reported recently the conflict between Iran and the Western world over Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was sentenced to death for leaving Islam for Christianity. Gene Kapp of the American Center for Law and Justice said what probably has been keeping the pastor alive is the international outcry against the sentence.

...the group reports that the surge of Christianity is looking like a revival.

One Open Doors worker in Iran, whose identity was concealed for safety, said, “Iranians are very outgoing and want to speak about their faith. That is why discipleship training (with elements of outreach and communications) for Iranian believers is successful. If you tell them that a Christian should share, the Iranian Christian shares.”

Report On Europe Finds "Numerous" Anti-Christian Crimes

The observatory has also monitored professional restrictions on Christians. A restrictive definition of freedom of conscience means that professions such as magistrates, doctors, nurses, midwives and pharmacists are "slowly closing for Christians.”

Teachers and parents "get into trouble” when they disagree with state-defined sexual ethics, the report said.

One survey in the U.K. indicates popular perception agrees. Seventy-four percent of poll respondents said that there is more negative discrimination against Christians than people of other faiths.

Obama Move Gives All Water In America To U.S. Military

An alarming new report prepared by the Federal Water Resources Agency of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment circulating in the Kremlin today states that United States President Obama has given control over all water in America to his military forces in what Russian officials deem an “unprecedented attack” against the freedom of human beings to have access to what is unquestionable our planets most vital life sustaining substance next to the air we breathe.

According to this report, on 16 March, Obama enacted what is called an Executive Order titled National Defense Resources Preparedness that amended the Defense Production Act of 1950 which is, in essence, a law designed to give the American President total dictatorial powers in cases of national emergencies or war.

According to this report, however, the most chilling part of Obama’s Executive Order was his giving power over all water recourses in the United States to his Department of Defense instead of to emergency, health and/or agricultural agencies one would normally expect to be put in charge of this most vital resource.

Most interesting to note about Obama’s move, this report continues, is that six days after (22 March) giving his military control over all water resources in America, and on World Water Day no less, US intelligence officials released a report warning that the “struggle over access to water supplies could spark global war in the next few decades”.

Agenda 21 On The Horizon

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the International Council for Environmental Law (ICEL) have released their fourth Draft of theInternational Covenant on Environment and Development. This document was designed from the beginning to convert the “soft-law” non-binding Agenda 21 into firmly binding global law - enforceable through the International Criminal Court and/or the dispute resolution features of the Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Two excellent analyses of this document are available here, andhere. Read the entire 242-page document here.

Everyone should learn all they can about Agenda 21 and sustainable development, and join the battle to keep it away from America. A great place to start is here (video 18:54).

The U.N., the IUCN, and the ICEL—are working as hard as they can to get Agenda 21 converted into binding international law

The international community—the U.N., the IUCN, and the ICEL—are working as hard as they can to get Agenda 21 converted into binding international law. It will happen unless informed Americans stand up—as they have begun to do across the country—and kick out ICLEI, Agenda 21, and realize that use of the term “sustainable development” is nothing more than a sound-good substitute for Agenda 21.

Mysterious Child Disease Hits Uganda

Mysterious disease that affects children devastates northeastern Uganda.

Health officials have been researching the possible causes of the disease since 2009, without success…

...a disease that is being called “nodding syndrome” or zombie disease (in literal translation). It is of unknown origin and has no cure. The authorities of Uganda estimate that more than three thousand children have been affected.

“There is a general effect on the neurological system and memory that impairs vision, eating or even the simple recognition of the environment,” said Emmanuel Tenywa, director of disease control of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Uganda.

It’s called this because of causing episodes similar to epileptic seizures, the disease mainly affects children between five and 15 years, and has caused more than 200 victims in Uganda over the last three years. Thousands of children in southern Sudan are also sick.

Lamwaka has had seizures up to five times a day over the last eight years and her health deteriorated. The father watches helplessly.

“When she used to speak, she asked for food,” he said. “Today she just reaches out,” he says. Why does this happen?

“We have a long list of things that do not cause the disease. But we do not yet have a definitive cause,” said Scott Dowell, director of the division of global disease detection and emergency response by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Cashless Sweden = Total Loss Of Freedom

Sure, for consumers who use digital payment for most everything, it seems like a great "populist" idea.

At first look, going cashless seems to be a progression to ultimate freedom. There will be no need to get cash from the bank. When you get paid, the money is immediately deposited into your account. There is no need to enter checks and balance your checkbook. And there will no longer be a need for the coin jar sitting in the corner, slowly filling up to allow for buying something frivolous every year. We can just sit around downloading ABBA and have the funds digitally removed from our accounts without even getting out of our beanbags.

This all sounds great -- why would anyone object to such a natural progression? Maybe the problem arose when Gen. Petraeus disclosed that the CIA has the ability to monitor us through our TV, dishwasher, and refrigerator. Or maybe it is the recent article in Wired that says that by September 2013, the NSA will have complete and total access to all things digital. Or maybe it's the fact that the Fed has been so devaluing the dollar that if (more likely when)the dollarcollapses, the Fed will have us deposit all of our cash into an account and issue us a card with everything we own and move the decimal point over a couple of digits.

But most importantly, the problem with going cashless is the total loss of liberty required. A cashless society gives the government absolute access into our lives, without anywhere to hide; indeed, it grants government total control of our finances and way of life.